Under pressure from Texans, feds streamline system for vetting offshore drilling permits

Amid growing pressure from Texas interests, federal regulators have launched a new, streamlined process for vetting offshore drilling permits in response to complaints from oil and gas companies that say the government’s previous system was opaque and unwieldy.

“We are constantly looking for ways to create a smarter, more efficient, and more transparent permit review process,” Bromwich said in a statement. “Our goal is to make the process of submitting permit applications easier, reduce the time it takes to review permits and improve BOEMRE’s communication with operators during the permit review process.

Industry leaders have implored regulators for more clarity about the permit applications, in some cases asking for blueprints to guide their proposals. Some offshore operators who snagged some of the first post-spill deep-water drilling permits also fielded requests from competitors wanting a glance at their applications.

Before last year’s Gulf spill — and the adoption of new safety and environmental mandates governing offshore oil and gas development — deep-water drilling applications frequently were under 100 pages long. Now, operators say they are filing permit applications with thousands of pages, even before they add the detailed 1,000-plus-page plans for containing blown-out deep-sea wells using systems from the Marine Well Containment Company or the Helix Well Containment Group.

The sheer size of the applications has made them difficult to manage, said George Morris, chief operating officer of Houston-based ATP Oil & Gas Corp.

“We went from 39 pages to 3,900 pages on a permit,” Morris said. “It’s just volumes of paper, and because it’s volumes of paper, you need to make sure everything is correct, and it takes a lot of time to get these out.”

Under new procedures announced today, ocean energy bureau staff will fully examine applications to make sure they are complete before they launch a substantive review of proposed drilling projects. The goal is to identify any lapses early on, rather than identifying omissions during the detailed analysis of a proposal’s substance.

Agency officials also hope the change will reduce the number of times permit applications are returned to operators as incomplete. “BOEMRE personnel currently spend significant time reviewing incomplete permit applications and sending the applications back to operators multiple times before receiving a complete application,” according to a bureau news release describing the changes. “This wastes precious time and staff resources and has proved frustrating for agency staff and operators alike.”

According to oil and gas companies that have have secured deep-water drilling permits, permitting officials at BOEMRE now may be deep in the details of a proposal when an omission is discovered that forces the application to be returned to the operator for more information.

The government today also outlined its priorities for processing permit applications, with complete proposals for ongoing operations (such as sidetracks or deeper exploration of an existing well) getting the most urgent attention. Applications deemed complete are next in the queue, followed by those that aren’t quite ready for prime time.

Proposals to drill emergency relief wells will still take precedence at the agency.